Marry in Haste
by sophronia
Summary: A lonely night, a beautiful girl -- what will Matt Camden do? And will Sarah find out about it? Chapters 3 and 4 just added.
1. Alone in New York

NOTE: This story was tough to write, because it required me to get inside the head of Matt Camden – not a very pleasant place to be. Please do not believe that I share Matt's opinions about women. When I look at the character that was created on the show, this is how I see him. 

As you probably know, I do not own any of these characters or anything else having to do with the show. Those are solely the province of Brenda H. and her minions. With those caveats, please read and enjoy. 

Marry in Haste …

Chapter One: Alone in New York

Matt Camden sat on the sofa in the New York apartment that he had shared with his wife until five o'clock that evening -- five hours earlier. He felt sick.

On the way home from work he had passed by a McDonald's restaurant and had suddenly been consumed with longing for a cheeseburger. He paused outside the door for several minutes, sniffing the familiar smell of fried meat, while passersby shoved and bumped him and never once turned back to say they were sorry. Then he frowned and went into the restaurant, almost slamming the glass door against the wall as he entered.

What the hell, he thought viciously. I'm not a Jew yet. And at this rate, I may never be.

He had savored the burger all the way home, taking small bites so it would last. Now that he had finished it, though, he was regretting it. Waves of nausea were washing over him, and his stomach was rolling as though he might vomit. He wadded up the McDonald's wrapper and hid it in the very bottom of the trash so that he wouldn't have to look at it.

Would he ever again have a single minute of his life when he didn't feel guilty about something?

He had not expected that Sarah's leaving would free him from the crushing burden of his guilt. It was all his fault, after all. She had stayed as long as she could. For months she must have known that something was wrong, that he lied when he told her everything was fine, that he thought of somebody else every time he touched her. But she hadn't left until he made it impossible for her to pretend any longer.

It had been a long time coming.

****

It was two weeks after the wedding that he noticed that she squinted and stuck out her jaw whenever he went to kiss her.

He tried to ignore it for a few days, but finally he couldn't keep it in any longer. "Do you have to do that squinting thing all the time?"

"What squinting thing?" she asked him, bewildered.

"Nothing, it's nothing," he answered quickly.

She looked at him strangely, but didn't push it.

Ever since then, he noticed it every time. The squint and the jaw.

****

Six weeks after the wedding, he lost his temper for the first time. He had come home to find a message on the machine from her mother, offering advice about a problem they'd had in bed the night before.

"I don't want you telling your mother about that kind of stuff," he told her when she got home from work. "It's none of her business."

Sarah bristled. "I tell my mother everything," she said. "She's like my best friend."

You didn't tell her when we got married the first time, he thought, but he didn't say it. "Sarah, I'm your best friend now," he said. "We're married. You're supposed to share things with me, not with your parents."

"But they're my family!"

"I thought we were a family now!"

There was shouting. She ran into the tiny bedroom in their apartment and locked the door. For a while he stood outside the door, pleading with her and listening to her sobbing. Then he got a blanket and pillow and slept on the sofa.

He caught her coming out to use the bathroom the next morning. He apologized over and over again. She tearfully forgave him. He was almost late for his first class because of the make-up sex.

When he arrived home that evening, he listened to their messages. There was one from her mother. "Sarah," it said, "I hope you and Matt have worked things out. If not, you know you always have a home here with us."

****

It was three months into the marriage when he realized he had made a mistake.

He was lying in their bed, listening to Sarah's raspy snore. She had told him that it was just allergies. It seemed to be a very bad year for allergies in New York. He knew that she couldn't help it, that she wasn't doing it on purpose, but as he lay awake night after night, watching the numbers slip by on the digital alarm clock and subtracting the number of hours of sleep he would get if he fell asleep right now, it was hard not to blame her.

The thought came to him out of the blue, at 3:58 a.m. 

I have made a mistake.

It sent a chill down his spine, leaving him shivering under the down comforter. As soon as it crossed his mind he knew that it was the truth. For all his glib reassurances, for all the impassioned speeches he'd given about love to his skeptical parents, they had been right after all. It was stupid to decide to spend the rest of your life with someone you barely knew.

He thought that he loved her, but he had never seen her sick or angry or crying. He hadn't yet encountered her stubbornness and intransigence in arguments. He hadn't realized the way she told little white lies to smooth things over and get her way. He didn't know how easily she cried.

 There was nothing to be done about it, of course. He'd made his bed, as his grandmother might say, and now he had to lie in it. For Matt Camden, son of a minister, son-in-law of a rabbi, divorce was out of the question. The number one lesson that his parents had imprinted on his brain – after No Sex Before Marriage, that is – was Marriage Is Forever. No exceptions.

Ordinarily, he would have called his parents and asked what to do. But his father lay in a hospital room that night, being prepped for open-heart surgery first thing in the morning. His mother was no doubt at her husband's side, worrying and praying. It was the absolute wrong time to bother them with the problems of their foolish older son.

Once he might have gone to a minister and asked for his advice. But now he was becoming a Jew. The rabbi who handled his conversion classes was a very old friend of Rabbi Glass and had known Sarah since she was a baby. How could he be expected to spill everything to him? He'd take Sarah's side, of course. He'd think that his sweet little Sarah had married a scumbag. He might even tell Rabbi Glass.

Some people had friends they could go to. John, his old roommate, had been full of common sense and intelligent advice. The last he'd heard from John was a card at his wedding. The only other friends he could think of were all old girlfriends. After his marriage, he had ceremoniously burned their phone numbers. It was time for a new beginning. He wouldn't be needing them again.

So now he was all alone in a strange city. The only people he knew in New York were Sarah, some friends of her family, and some acquaintances from his classes and his job at the hospital.

And Lindsey, but he couldn't call her.

He had nothing and nobody. The only thing he could do was accept it and try to move on. There was no way out.

He had made his bed and now he must lie in it.


	2. Georgia Girl

NOTE: This story was tough to write, because it required me to get inside the head of Matt Camden – not a very pleasant place to be. Please do not believe that I share Matt's opinions about women. When I look at the character that was created on the show, this is how I see him. 

As you probably know, I do not own any of these characters or anything else having to do with the show. Those are solely the province of Brenda H. and her minions. With those caveats, please read and enjoy.

Marry in Haste …

Chapter Two: Georgia Girl

He had met her in his psychology class on the first day. One look at Lindsey and you could tell that she wasn't from New York. All the other students wore shapeless layers of black clothing and overcaffeinated expressions. Lindsey had the peaches-and-cream complexion and smart pastel clothes that marked a person recently arrived from somewhere else.

"Georgia," she had said in her sweet lilting accent when he asked her where she was from after class. "Is it that obvious, then?" She smiled, and he noticed that her teeth were perfect.

"Yes, it is," he smiled back. "I'm afraid you look far too happy and healthy to be a New Yorker."

"Well, darn it," she drawled. "And I've been trying so hard to blend in."

They sat together the next class, and that happened to be the day that they assigned lab partners. Matt was secretly thrilled. He hadn't really wanted to take this class, he had only signed up because it filled a requirement and fit in his schedule, and it definitely made the class more pleasant to know that he would be spending most of it with Lindsey.

He didn't think anything was wrong with thinking about her that way. Not yet.

As the weeks went by, Matt and Lindsey saw more and more of each other. He said nothing about this to Sarah. They weren't doing anything wrong, after all. They were just grabbing a cup of coffee after class or meeting in the library to get some studying done. It was nothing. And besides, he was married, and she had a fiancé she'd left back in Georgia, so they weren't even thinking about doing anything inappropriate. It was out of the question.

But then he began to think about Lindsey in comparison to Sarah, his wife. Reluctantly, he had to admit that Lindsey came out better in almost every way. For one thing, she was definitely prettier. Sarah was good-looking, but even he, her husband, had to admit that she couldn't hold a candle to Lindsey's natural golden hair, big turquoise-blue eyes, and pink unmarred skin.

Then there was Lindsey's sense of humor. She had a beautiful laugh, soft and throaty, and she was always laughing. She could turn any story into a joke, could find the humor in almost any situation. She had him roaring with laughter at some of her anecdotes about Bobby, her Georgian fiancé, and the lives of other people in the small town where she had grown up. He hadn't laughed so much in a long time. Sarah's sense of humor tended toward the dark and sarcastic, and while she had a sharp wit, sometimes he got tired of the undertone of bitterness. They hadn't been doing much laughing lately, anyway.

Lindsey was smart, too. She'd gotten into Columbia by working and saving her money since she was thirteen years old and dreaming of becoming a doctor. She was the first girl in her family to graduate from college and the first of either gender to attend medical school. She had been valedictorian of her class in high school and college and had never gotten any grade short of an A. Of course, Sarah was very intelligent herself, but she had always had her parents and her money to smooth things over for her when she needed it.

Matt told himself that he was not being disloyal, just honest. He may have been married, but he wasn't dead, and a guy would have to be dead not to notice how wonderful Lindsey was. But gradually he found himself growing more and more critical of Sarah. She would come home from the hospital looking tired, dark circles under her eyes, a zit forming on her chin, her fingernails bitten, and he couldn't stop himself from remembering Lindsey sitting at her desk and smiling her perfect smile, clothes unwrinkled, hair unmussed after eight straight hours of studying. Sarah screeched at him out of exhaustion and frustration and all he could think about was the throaty timber of Lindsey's laugh as she told him about her life in Georgia. Sarah snored as she slept, keeping him awake even though he had worked an eighteen-hour day and had another one planned tomorrow, and he found himself thinking about Lindsey asleep in her apartment across campus. She would have cute little pajama sets with kittens or something on them, he thought, and her breathing would be even and soft, not Sarah's noisy rasp.

After he saw that his marriage was a mistake, after he realized that the rest of his life would be spent under a cloud of guilt for destroying two lives the way he had, thinking of Lindsey was the only thing that ever made him feel better.

It was so easy to see what he was doing in retrospect, so easy that Matt cringed at the awfulness of his own conduct while remembering it. But at the time he had been convinced that they were only friends, and he needed a friend in New York. He knew that Sarah was feeling more and more alienated from him, that she kept demanding that he tell her what was wrong. He placated her with empty assurances. She cried, screwing up her face and letting her mascara run, and he thought, Lindsey's mascara always looks perfect.

Finally, two nights ago, his cell phone rang just as he was finishing his shift. Lindsey.

"Do you think you could bring me some coffee on your way home? I think I'm out." He heard her voice wobbling all over the place.

"Lindsey, what's wrong? What happened?" 

"Just come over, please," she sobbed.


	3. Into Temptation

NOTE: This story was tough to write, because it required me to get inside the head of Matt Camden – not a very pleasant place to be. Please do not believe that I share Matt's opinions about women. When I look at the character that was created on the show, this is how I see him. 

As you probably know, I do not own any of these characters or anything else having to do with the show. Those are solely the province of Brenda H. and her minions. With those caveats, please read and enjoy.

Marry in Haste …

Chapter Three: Into Temptation

When Lindsey answered the door she had composed herself a bit, but he could still see the telltale signs that she had been crying. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her cheeks blotchy.

"Hi," she said, her voice throaty with unshed tears. "Come on in."

Matt stepped into the tiniest studio apartment he had ever seen. It looked smaller than the inside of his parents' minivan. But Lindsey had done her best to make it seem bigger. All the furniture was light-colored and of a style that made it appear to be floating like dancers on tiny wooden feet. A large mirror on the back of the door gave an illusion of space. Her kitchen area was spotless, with no dishes or food visible anywhere.

Matt thought of the one-bedroom apartment he and Sarah rented with what seemed to him an astonishing amount of Sarah's money. The rooms were crammed with knickknacks, stuffed animals, and other items that Sarah couldn't bear to leave behind with her parents. Every drawer and cupboard and closet was stuffed with possessions, especially in the kitchen, where they had to have two sets of everything – one for meat and one for dairy. You'd think an exception could be made for Jews who had to live in New York City, Matt sometimes thought. As it was, you couldn't open a door in the place without risking a flood of objects pouring out on you, and the tables and counters were constantly cluttered. In contrast, Lindsey's place seemed light and airy, despite its tiny size.

Lindsey closed the door behind him and took his coat. "Thank you so much for coming, Matt," she said. "I hope I didn't take you away from something important."

"No, I was just getting off work." 

"It's just that I don't really have anybody else to talk to." Tears began to spill over the edges of Lindsey's eyes. "You see, Bobby called tonight and he … and he …"

Matt had always hated seeing girls cry. He had even felt that way about Sarah the first couple of times. But Sarah cried so often and so easily, it began to feel like a practical joke she was playing on him. 

Lindsey's tears were obviously not a joke.

Matt did the only thing he could think of to do. He took her in his arms and held her, feeling the sobs racking her shoulders.

"He dumped me," Lindsey said, her voice muffled against his sleeve.

Matt led her gently over to the sofa, sat her down, and handed her a box of tissues he found on the coffee table. They were almost gone. He sat next to her, curling sideways to face her, and took her hands. "Tell me what happened."

"I don't know! I thought everything was fine! I called him last week and we even talked about maybe having the wedding this summer. I thought he was happy about it." Lindsey took her hand out of his to wipe her eyes with her tissue. "Then tonight he calls, he says that he doesn't want to go through with it. He's not so sure anymore. I thought he was kidding, so I laughed. But he wasn't kidding." Her voice broke on the last word, and her fragile composure fell apart completely. "Then he tells me it's all my fault. He still wants to get married, just not to me."

"That's ridiculous," Matt said firmly. "Any guy would be happy to have a girl like you." It was his father's voice, his father's words coming out of his own mouth, and Matt thought about how much he had always hated it when his dad spoke in meaningless clichés like that.

"But it's true!" Lindsey sobbed. "I'm the one who insisted on moving to New York. I could have gone to Georgia State and seen Bobby every weekend, but when I got the acceptance from Columbia, all I could think about was how wonderful it would be to live in New York City. I'd never been anywhere before. Bobby and I had been going out for so long, ever since junior high school, and I thought he'd always be there for me."

Matt felt a little uncomfortable. The truth was that Lindsey was very pretty, even when she was crying, and he felt like a typical male jerk for thinking about that at a time like this. He tried to concentrate on what she was saying.

"I should have known better! Now he thinks I must be cheating on him. He accused me of moving here so I could run around behind his back." Lindsey fought off a fresh volley of tears. "How could he! He knows he's the only guy I've ever been with, ever!"

"Been with?" Matt repeated faintly. Did she mean …? Somehow he had always thought of Lindsey as pure and perfect, like an angel who lived on a higher plane than all the people around her.

Lindsey renewed her sobs. "He's the only guy I've ever loved!" she wailed. "How could he think that I'd do that to him!" 

Matt heard himself murmuring words of comfort to her as he stroked her hair, which was smooth and smelled like strawberries. He hardly knew what he was saying, but eventually the words seemed to calm her down a bit.

"Oh, Matt, thank you so much just for being here," Lindsey breathed, curling up against him.

Matt could hardly hear her anymore with her face pressed against his chest. His heart was pounding dully and his head felt thick and gauzy, leaving him unable to think of anything to say. She felt so good next to him. Her body was so soft and seemed to fit so perfectly around his. Lifting her head from his chest, he tried to tell her that she would be all right, that he would be there for her.

Instead, he found himself kissing her.

Impossibly soft lips pressed against his, then opened, and he breathed in her scent of soap and tissues. In an instant his arms were around her. She gasped as his hands reached under her bathrobe and found the crescent of bare skin between her pajama top and bottom. Then they seemed to be moving of their own volition, sliding under her pajama top and up her back, reaching her sides and her arms and then past them. Without separating their mouths he leaned her down into the side of the sofa and lay on top of her, his hands caressing that warm soft flesh, wanting only for the kiss to last and last, as long as possible.

Faintly, as if from far away, he heard her voice muffled against his mouth. He ignored it.

She turned her head away from his, freeing her mouth. "Matt, please stop."

He barely heard the words, involved as he was in nuzzling her cheek, kissing her jaw and her neck.

"Matt, we can't do this. Stop. Stop it!"

She gave him a little shove, and he finally drew back. It was testimony to how far gone he was that for a minute he only wanted to grab her again and keep going, ignoring her pleas. But then his senses returned, and he realized what he had been doing.

Lindsey was looking at him in a way she never had before. "I'm sorry," she said. "I never should have called you, it was wrong of me."

Matt was speechless. What was she apologizing to him for, after what he'd been about to do -- after what he'd wanted to do? He should be the one apologizing. What if he hadn't stopped? And then he remembered Sarah at home, waiting for him to get back from work, and the magnitude of his transgression hit him like a blow to the chest. 

Lindsey was still staring at him, wrapping her bathrobe around herself. "I think you should go," she said.

Matt could only nod and slide back, away from her, trying not to meet her eyes. He got up off the sofa and picked up his coat. But he had to say something – he had to try to make things right, even if it was hopeless, even if the pain in his chest threatened to make speech an actual impossibility. 

"I'm sorry," he finally managed to say. "I'm so sorry. Please believe me, I didn't mean to do it. I didn't plan it. It just happened." He heard the pathetic, sniveling tone in his voice and despised it.

"I know," Lindsey said stiffly. "I just think you should go now."

"I'm going," he said. The words piled up unsaid: all the things he wanted to tell her about how beautiful she was, how Bobby was crazy for dumping her, how she had been the only thing he looked forward to in his whole life. He couldn't say any of it now. Catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror that hung on her closet door, he was overcome with such self-loathing that he was nearly sick. Yet he still managed to walk over to the door, open it, and let himself out.


	4. What Sarah Knew

NOTE: Here the story switches to Sarah's point of view. Please do not believe that I share Matt's opinions about women, or Sarah's opinions about love and marriage. I just wanted to provide a believable reason why a person living in the 21st century would marry someone they had just met. 

Also, I still do not own any of these characters or anything else having to do with the show. Those are solely the province of Brenda H. and her minions. With those caveats, please read and enjoy.

Marry in Haste …

Chapter Four: What Sarah Knew

All the way to California, staring out the window of the plane at the clouds, Sarah had been trying to think of a way to tell her parents.

_Mom, Dad, it's over. Matt and I are through_.

It would be a painful admission. Sarah Glass Camden had always been a girl with a lot of pride, and telling her parents that her marriage was a dismal failure would be a double blow. Not only would she have to admit defeat, something she had always hated, but she would have to watch as her parents struggled not to say "I told you so." They had been dying to say it ever since she had come home and told them she was marrying Matt Camden, preacher's son, after only one date.

Why had she done it? Looking back now, it was hard to see what had compelled her. Matt was good-looking, yes, that was true, and Sarah had been attracted to him from the first. But she had dated good-looking, sexy men before and had never been overwhelmed by desire the way she was with Matt, tempted almost beyond reasoning. Maybe it didn't put her in the best light, but she had to face it: a major part of her decision to marry had been because she wanted him, badly, and she hadn't wanted to wait.

There were other factors in her decision, she reminded herself. There had been fallout from the whole situation with Kenneth -- dating for three years and still no closer to marriage after all that time. Kenneth had seemed content to keep things as they were for as long as possible, millennia probably, and after a while she had started to wonder why a guy who said he  loved her so much was so content not to sleep with her. Finally, she had broken up with him, convinced that he would never change.

She had come home to her parents' house as she always did when things went wrong in her life. Rabbi and Mrs. Glass disliked Kenneth and were not sorry to see him go, but they were sympathetic to her misery. She had wasted so much time and energy and love on the guy, and all for nothing. They reassured her during her moments of despair when she wondered if she would ever find someone, when she worried that she had missed her chance at happiness and she might never get another.

While at her parents' house, she had discovered a huge box of old photo albums in the downstairs closet. They had belonged to her grandmother, a fanatical photographer who took dozens of pictures to record every family occasion. There were many, many photos in the book of her grandfather, and Sarah had marveled at the kind of love that would compel a woman to take pictures every day of the man she had been married to for decades, a man she must have known as well as she knew herself. 

Sarah's grandparents had lived in neighboring villages in Russia. They had known each other only a week before they ran away together, first to the city to get married, then to America. Yet here, carefully preserved on thick black cardboard pages, was proof of the bond that had tied them together for nearly 70 years, until their deaths. Their love for each other was clear to see on every page. 

Perhaps that was what she was doing wrong, Sarah thought. She was taking things too slowly, too carefully, waiting to see how things would work out before she was willing to make any kind of sacrifice or commitment. Maybe with something like love, it was better to follow your instincts, to do what your heart told you rather than holding back.

That was what had been foremost in her mind when she went to work her shift at the hospital and overheard orderly Matt Camden say he was looking for a wife.

So maybe she hadn't really been in the best frame of mind to make a decision when she and Matt went on that fateful date. Maybe it was true that once the excitement of the wedding had worn off, some of the excitement had seemed to wear off their marriage also. But still, she had done her best. She had been determined to make things work, all the way up until the night before last.

He had come in late, flustered and obviously upset, unwilling to look her in the eye. They hadn't been getting along very well for days and she had the suspicion that he was trying to avoid her as much as possible, but there was still something different about the way he was acting that night. Before, he had been excessively patronizing of her, treating her as though she was a burden he was expected to bear stoically, but he had never acted so … She searched for the word. _Guilty_, she realized with a shock. 

Quietly, she asked, "Who is she, Matt?"

Bull's eye. He turned bright red and began stammering -- what was she talking about, who did she mean -- but it was obvious. He was a terrible liar. And with her suspicions confirmed, the pain she'd been suppressing for weeks became unbearable, and she lost it.

"Don't lie to me!" she wailed. "I can see it written all over your face. How could you do it, after everything we've been through! How could you do this to me!" 

Matt grabbed her by the arms and held her, looking into her eyes. "Sarah, listen to me. It was nothing. I just stopped by to see a girl in my psych class. She called because her boyfriend broke up with her and she wanted to talk. It was nothing. I swear to you, I didn't sleep with her." 

She wavered for a minute. He was looking right into her eyes, desperate for her to believe him. Then she noticed the way his eyes would flicker off past her, over her head, while he talked. He didn't sleep with her …

"How far did it go, Matt? Did she stop you before you got what you wanted?"

He could say nothing.

She twisted out of his arms and ran into their tiny bedroom and locked the door.

Two days later, she was on the plane to Glenoak.


End file.
